CONNECTING THE DOTS
by Georg Feuerstein
Preface
1. Our Phototropic Species
2. Galactic Nomadism
3. Fire From Heaven
4. Mirroring Reality through Language and Art
5. Labyrinths, Mazes, and Mosaics
6. Omphalos: Navel of the Universe
7. Incandescent Knowledge
Epilogue
Endnotes
Select Bibliography
293 pages
Published by Traditional Yoga Studies
2008
From the Author’s Preface . . .This book is meant to motivate the reader to pause and ponder the incredible complexity in which we are involved and, hopefully, to find the simple Ariadne thread that shows the way out of the labyrinth of ignorance. I believe, as intelligent human beings, we all want to bask in the bright light of comprehending the world we inhabit, including the wondrous world of our own mind. The so-called “knowledge explosion” has left us with factoids, fragments of intelligence. We generally fail to grasp the meaning and relevance behind all the details flooding our consciousness. As many psychologists and critics of our civilization have noted, we have become fragmented ourselves.
The question is: Can we heal ourselves or are we doomed to a life of bits and pieces? An important corollary question is: Can we heal our ailing planet without first or at least simultaneously healing ourselves? The answer to the former question is moot, while, in my view, the latter question demands an affirmative answer.
In this book, I have opted for a wide-angle perspective that allowed for creative juxtapositions stimulating to the imagination. I have gathered what I judged to be significant details from a broad horizon, interweaving them with personal anecdotes and experiences for contour and color. Think of the resultant portrayals as fluid images rather than sharp-angled, purely rational representations. I regard this book as part of an ongoing process of assembling the pieces of a colorful mosaic of understanding that renders the world transparent.
No one has all the pieces, all the understanding. No one will ever know everything there is to be known. Like the artist creating a mosaic, however, I believe we already have a dim image of the final picture and are simply looking for the “right” pieces to fit together. Since each piece is itself transparent, we can see the world and ourselves through it—if only we were to look carefully enough. As more pieces are assembled, we do not inevitably get a more complete picture, but we might arrive at a better one.
And when we have more of a hi-res picture of what is going on with us and our human world, we also become more capable of making wise choices and taking decisive actions. Both are needed today more than ever, as our human family stands at the brink of an abyss that, if we are not mindful, will undoubtedly swallow us along with countless other fellow beings.
There is a continuity of thought running through all the chapters in this book. Within each chapter, however, I have allowed myself the luxury of a fair amount of free association and cross linking, which is an excellent method for bringing out otherwise unexpected relationships and properties of a given theme. Carl Gustav Jung called this procedure “amplification” by which a dream could be comprehended at deeper, symbolic levels. As hundreds of philosophers and poets around the world have affirmed, life is but a dream, and so this method can be meaningfully applied to just about everything that strikes our consciousness and wants to be understood.
The opening chapter deals with what I call our phototropic (light-oriented) nature—a theme that comes into full florescence in the concluding chapter about the inner light. From light we come, to light we go. In between, we are both light hungry and light sensitive. We cannot live without light, and yet we also shy away from too much light—both physically and psychologically. Yet, seeing with 20/20 vision, enlightenment is a very real possibility for us individually and, given enough time, for our species as a whole.
The second chapter looks at our outer and inner nomadism, which I believe is a vital aspect of our human nature. It goes hand in hand with our quest for light. Our species has done much traveling—supposedly from the heart of Africa to all parts of the globe, including the icy poles. We visited the Moon and, ready or not, are poised to migrate deeper into galactic space. Our restlessness is a curious phenomenon that we are called to understand rather than merely indulge. If we understand it correctly, we are unavoidably referred back to our primary photistic experience: Our human journey has a Teilhardian Omega point—enlightenment.
In the third chapter, I examine the role of fire—both outside of us and within the mind—which is closely connected with our phototropic and nomadic urges. The role of fire in our human civilization has thus far never been adequately examined, which is curious in itself. The insights proffered will shed light on our present pyromanic urge to obliterate our species and habitat by a nuclear inferno but also bring into sharp relief our inalienable potential for harnessing the inner fire—a psychospiritual capacity that could convey us safely into a world of luminosity here and now.
The fourth chapter seeks to elucidate the various kinds of language we humans employ to make sense of the inner and outer environments in which our lives unfold. Without language, neither light nor fire, neither outer space nor inner space, nor indeed anything else would make much sense to us. Language is a tool whose amazing potency few people have grokked. Properly used, it could prove a vehicle for self-actualization and self-transcendence, as well as for social transformation.
In the fifth chapter, I look at labyrinths, mazes, and mosaics, which are basic metaphors through which we can understand our human journey of inner growth. So long as a person’s life is a maze, frustration abounds. There is more virtue to seeing life as a mosaic whose tesserae we can patiently assemble, following our intuition of the resultant image. The metaphor of the labyrinth suggests that life is a unidirectional path that leads to an inner core, if only we resolve to travel it and sustain our momentum. All too many of us feel lost in the elaborate maze of our postmodern civilization. If only we could “remember” ourselves in the midst of the uncertainties of this artificial maze, we would begin to see our path more clearly.
As a complementary counterpoint to labyrinths, mazes, and mosaics, which have an external and an internal aspect, the metaphor of the center—the navel or omphalos of world and self—is the focus of the sixth chapter. The current craze of exposing, ornamenting, piercing, and surgically modifying the navel is, I propose, merely an unconscious and largely neurotic manifestation of a deeper impulse to honor the center of things.
Finally, in the seventh chapter, I attempt to knot the major themes of the preceding chapters into a cohesive, impressionistic whole by focusing on the spiritual potential of our species, which is fulfilled in the realization of enlightenment of body and mind. The very possibility of such a realization puts everything else into proper perspective.
While I admire thinkers who patiently attempt to construct an overarching theory of everything, I nevertheless feel that all system-building efforts are in the final analysis quixotic. No system will ever do justice to reality. No mill can process all the grist there is. It is one thing to try to make sense of the larger picture and another to squeeze everything into a tight rationalistic frame. I have deliberately steered clear of system building and am more interested in making my own understandings transparent to others who, like me, savor and cultivate meaning in their lives.